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Over at Amazon and Walmart, they currently have the Skilsaw SPT70WT-01 portable worm drive table saw on sale, for $320.

This saw debuted a few years ago, and has been positively reviewed. It’s powerful (thanks to the worm-drive mechanism), and offers a 25″ rip capacity.

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While I wouldn’t say this is a screaming hot deal, it is an excellent bargain. Keep in mind that this is not the version that is bundled with a Diablo blade. The included blade probably isn’t any worse than the ones included with other portable table saws, but it’s not likely any better.

A Higher-Priced but Better Value Deal

If you ever plan on buying the folding saw stand, Acme Tools has a bundle price on the saw + stand combo. Buy the saw at its regular price of $349, and you get the folding saw stand for FREE. The Acme Tools bundle also comes with a Diablo blade.

If you ask me, this is the better bargain if you can use the stand and are willing to spend the extra $30.

16 Comments

Bought one 2 years ago. It had a terrible wobble to the arbor. Measured 1/64″ with Forest and Tenryu blades. Talked to tech support and they said the bearings were only given tolerance of plus/minus .006″ which is garbage. A third world country can make bearings with better tolerance. Packed it up, shipped backed and moved on.

Festool verge on the irrational in refusing to do anything they consider competing on price and given that they are now the owners of Sawstop I would be surprised if they allowed Sawstop to do so particularly if they intend to bring the technology to Europe. They will want to ensure it retains its premium price tag.

ToolNut has a 20% off sale running for a bunch of Skil tools. The newer SPT99 table saw with Skil blade (SPT99-11) in the sale, but by the time you add in the $100 handling charge, it’s more expensive than the SPT99 with the Diablo blade (SPT99-12) from Acme.
The sale does include quite a few models of the worm drive circular saws though, and the pricing seems to work out very well on them.

From the excellent discussion there (especially by 99sport), it seems like the worm drive doesn’t itself make the saw more powerful, but it ALLOWS a narrower, faster spinning motor to make the same power at the blade as a slower but wider motor, and there may be some cost savings in going that way. It also ALLOWS the motor to be offset from the blade and shaft, allowing possibly greater depth of cut.

I have the SPT99-12 which I love. That’s the model with the gravity rise type stand. I got it for $475 from Acme and it came with a free Skil 7 1/4″ Circular saw. This was either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday last year, I can’t remember which.